I had a migraine last night. Worse than even the one last July. It started around 1pm, ended around 12am. That’s when I finally fell asleep for good. I can’t go on anymore about that, because fucking talking about them triggers them. I tried having a characer with migraines but found I was incapable of describing one in the detail is deserves without living through it. I get the constant screen time and tech neck don’t help but they sure aren’t the causes. Anyway.

So. I think it’s time I come to terms with shit. I think we all know what’s going to be for the best.

But please. Let me talk about why for a really long time first.

So like.

I don’t know.

Since I drunkenly (DISCLAIMER: when I say I was drunk while I did something, it’s more like a detail than my making an excuse. I DON’T do that. It’s annoying) screenshot a text convo with best friend and made it a blog post (see one below) I think things might be over with N. Not that they ever started. But more often than not, I find myself just fucking wishing this had never started. Because, I guess, there’s no possible way he could realize how increeeeedibly hurtful I’ve found all of this. ALL OF IT. Like. What did I do. What the fuck is it that I do that screams “treat me like shit” to people? Do I ACT like I don’t have feelings? Because I feel very emotional. Like all the fucking time. I guess some good came of it. Twice he articulated a feeling I was having into actual words and I was like….omg he’s right….and that’s always fun, because you’re like..wait…no…I learned this recently….I get to have my own writing space to say anything I need to…or…it’s shitty when someone makes me sexually uncomfortable. Not dying to discuss why I fucking needed these things explained to me at thirty, but whatever, moving on.

So. Idk. He DM’ed me and was at first all saracastic like pffft you shouldn’t have used WEEKS because it’s slightly longer than he said to get my manuscript from me, then went very like, I can’t believe you’d hurt me this way, “sometimes I let people down but I really don’t think this is one of those times. // Anyway have a good night.”Then that following morning, because he sent these while I was sleeping, I said, “18 days=justifiable all caps, I stand by it. And why did I say I was ignoring you?” Because in one of his messages I glossed over he was like “Do you really like I’m ignoring you?”

UH. YEAH. WHY WOULDN’T I.

It makes me super sad that the most he ever talked to me was when things were all flirty before that one time we hung out. Was it because he wanted to fuck me? Well that doesn’t upset me, in fact, that’s SO what I was into happening as well…so….yeah….it’s like even more depressing

What’s REALLY crazy, is, I think I know the real issue. I haaaaaaad to have somehow formed some sort of feelings for this guy. Like being as a pathetic as I am, it’s not shocking someone showing even slight interest is enough to draw me in. Look at R. I mean really, the things I put up with from him. Anyway. You know why I know I REALLY liked him? Because like, physically, he’s not what I’m SUPER into. Granted, if you don’t know what a guy’s dick is like, you can’t really judge him as a whole, physical specimen, but I mean, N is basically a less hot version of my husband. And my husband is also ripped, and slightly taller. (only slightly).

But. I still really, really, really liked this guy.

It’s happened before. That’s how it was with Paul (remember him? GOD that was a long blog). And it was sort of the same, in the sense that Paul was also an English major, although he was three years older than myself and we didn’t really bond over that subject. But it was still a talking-based, intellectual thing. Like with R. But, okay don’t get me wrong I was very sexually attracted to R. Dude was fiiiiiine. And like, if I had to rate him on dick/ability to fuck, like an 8.5. Truly wonderful. THAT was not the issue with him. But alas, that can’t be the only thing, NOT when someone has the issues R has. I tried finding him on instagram the other day, just to like, see if he was still alive, and I couldn’t. So, maybe he deactivated it? I tried googling if he died and couldn’t find anything so it’s probably not as dramatic as I’m making it because of course I am.

I guess what’s REALLY depressing is how much this whole thing meant to me, and how obsessed I still am.

Which I guess brings me right to my original point. I guess I should just give up there. I think if I remain completely silent at this point nothing more will occur.

Do I want it to?

Of fucking course.

But like.

I should move on

Right?

I think the fact that I’m asking tells me what I need to know.

Why does it make me SO sad?

When you repress you real feelings, for means of survival, for SO long, it does something to your abilities to express them later on. Which is grossly unfair. But you know what’s more unfair? How fucking puffy my undereyes get when I cry, which leads to to gross under eye creases that make me look old and tired. HOW FUCKING UNFAIR IS THAT. My god do I hate the cosmetic payments I must make for my myriad mental illness.

Or maybe it’s just the alcoholism? Cannot tell.

But back to my really infantile emotions.

SO like. Knowing I’m way into this guy, I go into what SEEMED like it was going to be an awesome evening only to be obliterated, then I continue the connection, if however removed, for months. WHY.

OH I fucking good and goddamn know well why. Roughly the same reason I love getting fucked up.

I like this feeling, and I’m going to pursue it. Because there was a long, long time where I didn’t GET to express my feelings, and it fucking warped part of me. But it’s too little too late now, isn’t it cowboy? IDK where that term came from but I’m SUPER drunk guys. Can you tell? I pride myself on hiding it whilst communicating like a pro, because that’s what I am at this point. Anyway.

So. Time to fucking breathe and tell myself this is for the best until I’m fiiiiiiinally at the point where I actually don’t care. Instead of just publically pretending like I don’t care, which has already started.

This is a picture of a tweet i deleted because who cares? But it’s true.

My fucking frightening mountain of issues aren’t anyone’s fault. No one who meets me/knows me in a not-personal context could possibly realize how fucked I am, and in how many ways. I guess no one can tell by the way I interact with them that I’m not like this with everyone, and this really was special to me, and I cannot possibly imagine a time in the future where it would seem worth it to try for this with anyone else, and that breaks whatever strange heart I have left.

I wish it was just that I’m horrible and my husband should be enough.

But this is how I feel. At this point I don’t think I should keep trying to control it.

I feel I’ll find him at some point.

Or I’ll have kids.

Like, besides writing my book, and potentially moving for the change of scenery and because this area holds no joy for us, that’s really the only thing happening in my life. Me. Going about things. Waiting for one or the other to happen. Working hard because that’s how my mom and Grandma raised me. Absorbing pain and harboring grudges like nobody’s business.

I don’t mind either.

But. Like my book will happen regardless. That’s like a given. NOT THAT I HAVE A BETA READER ANYMORE. But trying to move past that….

One of them needs to happen soon here. I’m bored. I’ve worked long and hard enough. Not that I plan on quitting working or writing, but I’m just saying, like, IDK, perhaps it’s my innate arrogance, but I genuinely do feel I deserve good thing and happiness. Is that SO wild? Because, where I grew up, IT IS. BUt I don’t want to talk about them, they suck.

So. That’s what’s REALLY up with me. And why the wholllllle situation with N just bummed me the fuck out. I’m weirdly lonely and I feel like just my husband isn’t enough when I don’t have ANY family of my own, and we don’t have kids, and I literally don’t have friends, like at all, in real life. As in people to sometimes spend time with. It just isn’t a thing.

But anyway.

That’s all.

It’s not N’s fault that I’m so fucked and needy. And I don’t think he could possibly realize how hard all of that was for me, and how much it meant to me. all of that is my fault anyway.

and it seems like it would be best for the both of us if we had nothing to do with each other. Which is what I meant when I said “things go back to the way they were before” months ago when I was texting him the day after he..idk what you want to call it, whatever’ed my feelings. He said thank you and it stung all the more, then he was like I thought you meant before it was weird, and I was like…when was that except when we weren’t talking? Then I tried to go back to the talking alot flirty stage and that OBVIOUSLY wasn’t right either.

So. No more conversation.

No more beta reader.

I need this weed pen and cheap beer taken away from me.

I cried for two hours straight yesterday. Migraine.

Can feelings cause migraines? Because there’s a frightening amount of tension in me. It causes them. And I feel it in my chest when I’m doing yoga. I know that sounds stupid but like, it’s definitley what’s happening.

I have a title for it, now. AND I named both the countries. Both of those items have been on the To Do list for so long, I’m almost shocked I’m at this point. Now all that’s left is having the draw the maps, then color them. Then once I’m certain I’ve gotten the exact placements I need, I’m going to paint them. I was actually very into painting (mostly acrylic and watercolor) as a hobby for a few years, pretty much when I was finishing undergrad and for the first year I was out of college before I was like eh this is stupid lets move downstate and I’ll go to grad school. I still have all the supplies, I could get back into it in a minute. Plus I’ve always wanted detailed maps for my own reference, so I don’t factually contradict myself. These are things to be considered. But anyway.

They say the two things that make people most unhappy are living in the past, and comparing yourself to others. I don’t disagree. But, at the same time, isn’t it kind of hard to deal with something that still upsets you, say 14 years after it happened? Also, I’ve always wanted to be able to give two concise stories that sum up the general tone/atmosphere/feeling of my entire life, from like 6th-12th grade. Right when high school ended, well, you all know what I did. But here I’d like to offer two examples, picked at random from my numerous memories of life be truly horrible and shitty to me during that time in my life. Being myself got me punished, big time, on all fronts, so I learned to hide then I never came back out, again on all fronts. It’s fine, because if you’re smart enough you can use that to your incredible advantage. My whole life people have been telling me they can’t tell how I really feel about something, that I seem like I kind of just go along with whatever and am chill about it. Yeah, well good, I guess, but that is NOT AT ALL what’s happening in my mind. But like, my exterior is a good calm over the storm, or something, I guess? Anyway, here’s two examples of how shitty everyone was to me, unprovoked for the most part, when I was a teenager.

First example – how I was treated at school. I’m going to use real names here because, even all these years later, I really don’t care if I offend them. Two friends (who shall remain nameless because I actually still like these two, and they didn’t hear what was said to me, for some reason) were in first hour chemistry, I was not, but they would convene in the chem lab before school started in the morning along with another friend of theirs who was a MEAN fucking controlling mega-cunt named Alaine who I’D known since the 1st grade, and my friends’ boy interests – Ben who was in our grade from a different city and Josh, who a senior but someone I had also known for most of my life because he went to my grade school and church.

Well, teenage Cassie made the horrible mistake of starting to join this merry band — I didn’t care for either guy, they were both usually pretty rude/mean to me — or Alaine, but I liked the two other people so I went in to hang out with them and not to stand about the lockers by myself, or go sit alone in my first hour classroom with the teacher. Well, I guess Josh and Ben didn’t like that I started doing that, because the three of them never wanted anyone in their group other than the select 5 — Josh, Alaine, Ben and the other two, who were really, overly, weirdly complacent when they were younger. I know why, now. So, one morning, shortly I developed this habit of conversing with that group in the chem lab before school started, I walk in about two seconds into my morning, Ben says, “Cassie, you’re loud and obnoxious and no one likes you.” Josh immediately adds, “I second that.” I looked over to Alaine, who was sitting very nearby, she makes a BARELY audible, “Aw,” noise, like in some TINY part she felt a little bit bad that that had happened, but she wasn’t about to REFUTE that statement in any way. My other two friends, like I said, didn’t seem to notice or hear.
I don’t think they were expecting me to walk out of the classroom without saying anything else, and then remain completely mute during lunch. Because, you guessed it, they were there then too. Josh actually repeatedly said things about how he couldn’t stand how loud my friend Beth and I were at lunch, but luckily he didn’t have the pull to make my friend (his girlfriend, this is actually my Best Friend, this is what I went through in order to have anything to do with her in high school. She was literally surrounded by shitty people who wanted to control her, like her mother and Alaine and Josh. I don’t mean to sound pompously fucking full of myself but I was the actual true, real friendship out of all of that. Maybe they others could sense that, because they did what they could to keep me away.
I remember so well, the night after Ben/Josh said that to me, I was on AIM like always, and Josh IMs me out of the blue and says something like “I see you were quite stung by something I said today.” Like, I think that is it, verbatim. He literally instant messaged me to rub salt in the wound. I did what I did best and completely deflected him. I was deeply obsessed with this guy named Mike who was my brother’s age, and he came into the high school after class had let out (his dad was a teacher there) and I got to see him. So I told Josh that it didn’t matter anymore because I got to see Mike. I was REALLY open about being into him. But in keeping with the overall shitty quality of my life, he talked to me and hung out with me just enough to lead me on. But, I’ve already told you about him, though I doubt I used him real name. Anyway.

I KNOW this isn’t SO cruel or traumatizing, but I don’t know man, I’m 30 and that shit still bothers me. I know it shouldn’t. But it does. So, what do I do with that? Because any idiot knows pretending that something doesn’t bother you, when it does, it probably what gives you cancer. Or at least a lot of problems stemming from your repressed shit. I mean, I guess it’s why I’m so creative and industrious. If you’re both of those things, once you get firing on all cylinders you’re remarkably capable. There’s drawbacks, of course. I mean my biggest issue is all my “substance abuse” if you will. And then the emotional problems, but I mean…tomato/tomato am I right?

So yeah, that’s about how I got treated by everyone for most of high school. And, I fucking promise, I was NOT mean enough or a big enough of a bitch EVER to deserve the way I was treated.

That’s what it was. What condemned me and saved me, and it’s still doing both to this day. is my constant internal notion that I deserved better than what I had in life, in all regards. My brother has it too. The difference between us is that I am most willing to work very hard to get what I deserve, therefore making it something I earned on my fucking own just like I always had to do everything anyway.

So, now, the second story, of the general tone and feeling one had being a member of my family.

Second Example: This was my junior year in high school. I have a job at the same pet store company I would work for until I was 24, I was on my way to a closing 4-9:30 shift after having gone to school all day. We had 4 cars in a single lane driveway at the time, and it was winter. My dad needed to move my car in a hurry, and for some reason I couldn’t do it. He refused to scrape the ice from car windows, instead he would use a Double Gulp cup to dump hot water from the kitchen sink onto the windshield until it was acceptable. He does exactly that, to my car, to move it. He throws the empty (he thinks) Double Gulp cup onto my passenger seat. On that seat is a paper I need to turn in the next day. I unwisely did not save it. I forget why. I was a child. Forgive me. I somehow see the state my paper is in (illegible) and realize that after I get home from work at 9:50 I have to rewrite this whole thing from memory, because I can’t turn it in as is, and a LOT of it is really blurry.
HERE is where I make a fatal error. Well, not literally fatal, but bear with me. I show that I am upset over something my dad did. You CANNOT understand, this was not done. 1) I was to always be the perfect golden angel child. When I was really young, my dad would ask me if I still loved him and try to hug me in front of my mom when they were fighting. She would get SO angry. I still haven’t figured that one out. But I mean asking her would only upset her, and her life is still so shitty, guys, and he would just say, “That never happened” because that’s literally what he says about everything. But I also will never speak to him for so long as he’s alive, so, you know. Guess I’ll have to leave that alone until I can afford intensive therapy. Maybe one day. Back to this shitty winter day that just got way worse because of my father’s laziness.
Well, he sees that I’m upset, and I tell you it’s like a mother fucking light switch, he instantly gets REALLY angry with ME for being angry. That’s not allowed. I CANNOT show negative emotions. Like, you don’t understand how true this is. I’m to be out of the way and not taking up any time/money/attention, but if I’m around I better be fucking perfect AND capable to absorbing whatever level of toxic shit any of THEM felt like spewing at me, and believe me with those three it was a lot of the time.
So now I’m getting more and more upset, because now he’s screaming at me, telling me it wasn’t him because the cup was EMPTY when he threw it on the seat. But if you know DG cups, they had an inside ridge, or at least they did back then, and water collects on it, when you first dumps it out, and doesn’t make it out on the first empty, I’m telling you it was a thing, also, what else could’ve spilled 1/2 cup of water all over my paper? But he refused to believe it, because NOTHING can be his fault, ever (more on that in a moment).
Then, he tells me I better “smarten up about my mood” (I was angry and crying and telling him I had to go to work) or else “we can have this conversation at your work.”
When I was a teenager, on my way to work after going to school all day, my dad got SO pissed at me for getting upset with him for making a mistake, he started threatening to show up at my work to scream at me to embarrass me in front of my boss/coworkers/customers. Because that was VERY much what his threat insinuated. He had a way of doing that.
And, I mention this story, because it’s a time when my brother was actually the cool one. He took the water damaged paper and managed to retype the whole thing for me, so I didn’t have to do it when I got home. So it was over after that, but I remember crying so hard the whole way to work, which wasn’t a long enough drive just then.

Yes, those two stories capture it all right. I guess all fine things go through a refining process, don’t they? I guess that’s what my deal is. Like I’m strangely arrogant about certain things, I do get that, but you don’t understand what I’ve done to even get to where I’m at. Most bitches with highly abusive fathers end up marrying their father (so to speak) and that’s like the opposite of what I did.

But, I have a small snippet of an email to show you, so you can see firsthand how little my mother’s suffering because of him is over. And, I mean, I don’t have people in my life who are shitty to me, friend or surrogate friend, because I have like no one in my life. My best friend is distant in every possible way, which is just her way so it’s fine, but you know, I have no regular companions, besides my husband. If I had to choose between him and friends, I would choose him, but thing is I don’t have to. He isn’t at all the reason I have no one in my life. He’s actually always encouraging me to make friends, but that’s kind of hard because I pretty go to 1) work, 2) grocery store 3) pole dancing gym. I thought maybe I’d meet someone there, but alas, that doesn’t seem meant to be.

I mean, I’m writing a book in additional to a regular working adult life, who kind of lives paycheck to paycheck. I mean, I get the bills paid, but aside from my 10% unmatched 401K I have no savings. Hopefully this book thing turns out, right? Even though, I mean, the only real reason I want to write it is a selfish one. Like, it’s all for me. All the writing, this, the books I’ll produce as the years go on. It’s all for me. I need it, and I like doing it, and I’m good at it. It’s a sword that can be ever-sharpened, writing is. I mean, duh. Look at what I do for funsies on my Saturdays. I get REALLY stoned and watch some Orange is the New Black then get guilty about not editing, then four pages in of editing CF (my book, I’ll tell you what they stand for one day) I realize I haven’t blogged in a minute. So, here I am, a million words in, like always.

So yeah, things that happened to me a long time ago still upset me to this day. I’m not perfect.
ALSO – Josh and Ben and Alaine all grew up to be a special sort of loser, especially the guys. And Josh, who was always SO arrogant about how skinny he was, always saying shit like “Oh, I just don’t like feeling full, so I don’t eat much.” when really he had a typical teenager diet more or less he just had a fast metabolism like so many teenagers do, Josh is fat now. And he still lives in our hometown, unmarried, hosting Magic the Gathering tournaments at the same greasy comic book store I went to a few times with my brother. And he’s fat. Ben, I don’t know much about him beyond the random interactions I had with him in college. He went to my undergrad school for a few semesters the same time I did. I had a sociology class in the mornings twice a week, and I would walk past him on my way out as he waited to be let into a classroom. He messaged me a few times on facebook, because I’m sure when he was fucked up he went through his friends list to see who might be willing to date him. Ben was not at all attractive to me, BUT he’d landed my best friend’s twin as a girlfriend two different times in high school, so I can see why he thought he had a shot. He didn’t.
That’s another thing, I never understood why so few guys were into my in high school. I was attractive, especially junior and senior year. I never understood it. I guess it was a REALLY small sampling of human beings (76 in my graduating class). My husband doesn’t understand it either. To hear him tell it, and I am sure he’s being honest by the way he still acts, 9 years later, that he was attracted to me, a lot, from the first moment he saw me. The same thing happened with Drew (that’s Doug’s real name, for those keeping up), because that was really shortly before I met my husband. My husband never understood why Doug wasn’t into me/wanted to date me. I was like ha me neither. But it all worked out anyway.

So as you can see, no matter what happens now, things are so much better than when I was younger. So there’s that. All right it’s getting kind of late, and Sundays are kind of weird. I only get 3 hours after I get home from pole class before it’s just another work night.